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Charles died, and his brother came to the throne; but, though the person of the
sovereign was changed, the love and awe with which the office was regarded were
undiminished. Indeed, it seems that, of the two princes, James was, in spite of
his religion, rather the favorite of the High Church party. He had been
specially singled out as the mark of the Whigs; and this circumstance sufficed
to make him the idol of the Tories. He called a parliament. The loyal gentry of
the counties and the packed voters of the remodeled boroughs gave him a
parliament such as England had not seen for a century, a parliament beyond all
comparison the most obsequious that ever sate under a prince of the House of
Stuart. One insurrectionary movement, indeed, took place in England, and another
in Scotland. Both were put down with ease, and punished with tremendous
severity. Even after that bloody circuit, which will never be forgotten while
the English race exists in any part of the globe, no member of the House of
Commons ventured to whisper even the mildest censure on Jeffreys. Edmund Waller,
emboldened by his great age and his high reputation, attacked the cruelty of the
military chiefs; and this is the brightest part of his long and checkered public
life. But even Waller did not venture to arraign the still more odious cruelty
of the Chief Justice. It is hardly too much to say that James, at that time, had
little reason to envy the extent of authority possessed by Lewis the Fourteenth,
By what means this vast power was in three years broken down, by what perverse
and frantic misgovernment the tyrant revived the spirit of the vanquished Whigs,
turned to fixed hostility the neutrality of the trimmers, and drove from him the
landed gentry, the Church, the army, his own creatures, his own children, is
well known to our readers. But we wish to say something about one part of the
question, which in our own time has a little puzzled some very worthy men, and
about which the author of the "Continuation" before us has said much with which
we can by no means concur.
James, it is said, declared himself a supporter of toleration. If he violated
the constitution, he at least violated it for one of the noblest ends that any
statesman ever had in view. His object was to free millions of his subjects from
penal laws and disabilities which hardly any person now considers as just. He
ought, therefore, to be regarded as blameless, or, at worst, as guilty only of
employing irregular means to effect a most praiseworthy purpose. A very
ingenious man, whom we believe to be a Catholic, Mr. Banim, has written a
historical novel, of the literary merit of which we cannot speak very highly,
for the purpose of inculcating this opinion. The editor of Mackintosh's
Fragments assures us, that the standard of James bore the nobler inscription,
and so forth; the meaning of which is, that William and the other authors of the
Revolution were vile Whigs who drove out James from being a Radical; that the
crime of the King was his going further in liberality than his subjects: that he
was the real champion of freedom; and that Somers, Locke, Newton, and other
narrow-minded people of the same sort, were the real bigots and oppressors.
Now, we admit that if the premises can be made out, the conclusion follows. If
it can be shown that James did sincerely wish to establish perfect freedom of
conscience, we shall think his conduct deserving of indulgence, if not of
praise. We shall not be inclined to censure harshly even his illegal acts. We
conceive that so noble and salutary an object would have justified resistance on
the part of subjects. We can therefore scarcely deny that it would at least
excuse encroachment on the part of a king. But it can be proved, we think, by
the strongest evidence, that James had no such object in view, and that, under
the pretence of establishing perfect religious liberty, he was trying to
establish the ascendancy and the exclusive dominion of the Church of Rome.
It is true that he professed himself a supporter of toleration. Every sect
clamors for toleration when it is down. We have not the smallest doubt that,
when Bonner was in the Marshalsea, he thought it a very hard thing that a man
should be locked up in a gaol for not being able to understand the words, "This
is my body," in the same way with the lords of the council. It would not be very
wise to conclude that a beggar is full of Christian charity, because he assures
you that God will reward you if you give him a penny; or that a soldier is
humane because he cries out lustily for quarter when a bayonet is at his throat.
The doctrine which from the very first origin of religious dissensions, has been
held by all bigots of all sects, when condensed into a few words, and stripped
of rhetorical disguise is simply this: I am in the right, and you are in the
wrong. When you are the stronger you ought to tolerate me; for it is your duty
to tolerate truth. But when I am the stronger, I shall persecute you; for it is
my duty to persecute error.
The Catholics lay under severe restraints in England. James wished to remove
those restraints; and therefore he held a language favorable to liberty of
conscience. But the whole history of his life proves that this was a mere
pretence. In 1679 he held similar language, in a conversation with the
magistrates of Amsterdam; and the author of the "Continuation" refers to the
circumstance as a proof that the King had long entertained a strong feeling on
the subject. Unhappily it proves only the utter insincerity of all the King's
later professions. If he had pretended to be converted to the doctrines of
toleration after his accession to the throne, some credit might have been due to
him. But we know most certainly that, in 1679, and long after that year, James
was a most bloody and remorseless persecutor. After 1679, he was placed at the
head of the government of Scotland. And what had been his conduct in that
country? He had hunted down the scattered remnant of the Covenanters with a
barbarity of which no other prince of modern times, Philip the Second excepted,
had ever shown himself capable. He had indulged himself in the amusement of
seeing the torture of the Boot inflicted on the wretched enthusiasts whom
persecution had driven to resistance. After his accession, almost his first act
was to obtain from the servile parliament of Scotland a law for inflicting death
on preachers at conventicles held within houses, and on both preachers and
hearers at conventicles held in the open air. All this he had done, for a
religion which was not his own. All this he had done, not in defense of truth
against error, but in defense of one damnable error against another, in defense
of the Episcopalian against the Presbyterian apostasy. Lewis the Fourteenth is
justly censured for trying to dragoon his subjects to heaven. But it was
reserved for James to torture and murder for the difference between two roads to
hell. And this man, so deeply imbued with the poison of intolerance that, rather
than not persecute at all, he would persecute people out of one heresy into
another, this man is held up as the champion of religious liberty. This man, who
persecuted in the cause of the unclean panther, would not, we are told, have
persecuted for the sake of the milk-white and immortal hind.
And what was the conduct of James at the very time when he was professing zeal
for the rights of conscience? Was he not even then persecuting to the very best
of his power? Was he not employing all his legal prerogatives, and many
prerogatives which were not legal, for the purpose of forcing his subjects to
conform to his creed? While he pretended to abhor the laws which excluded
Dissenters from office, was he not himself dismissing from office his ablest,
his most experienced, his most faithful servants, on account of their religious
opinions? For what offence was Lord Rochester driven from the Treasury? He was
closely connected with the Royal House. He was at the head of the Tory party. He
had stood firmly by James in the most trying emergencies. But he would not
change his religion, and he was dismissed. That we may not be suspected of
overstating the case, Dr. Lingard, a very competent, and assuredly not a very
willing witness, shall speak for us. "The King," says that able but partial
writer, "was disappointed. He complained to Barillon of the obstinacy and
insincerity of the treasurer; and the latter received from the French envoy a
very intelligible hint that the loss of office would result from his adhesion to
his religious creed. He was, however, inflexible; and James, after a long delay,
communicated to him, but with considerable embarrassment and many tears, his
final determination. He had hoped, he said, that Rochester, by conforming to the
Church of Rome, would have spared him the unpleasant task; but kings must
sacrifice their feelings to their duty." And this was the King who wished to
have all men of all sects rendered alike capable of holding office. These
proceedings were alone sufficient to take away all credit from his liberal
professions; and such, as we learn from the dispatches of the Papal Nuncio, was
really the effect. "Pare," says D'Adda, writing a few days after the retirement
of Rochester, "pare che gli animi sono inaspriti della voce che corre tra il
popolo, d'esser cacciato il detto ministro per non essere Cattolico, percio
tirarsi al esterminio de' Protestanti" Was it ever denied that the favours of
the Crown were constantly bestowed and withheld purely on account of the
religious opinions of the claimants? And if these things were done in the green
tree, what would have been done in the dry? If James acted thus when he had the
strongest motives to court his Protestant subjects, what course was he likely to
follow when he had obtained from them all that he asked?
Who again was his closest ally? And what was the policy of that ally? The
subjects of James, it is true, did not know half the infamy of their sovereign.
They did not know, as we know, that, while he was lecturing them on the
blessings of equal toleration, he was constantly congratulating his good brother
Lewis on the success of that intolerant policy which had turned the fairest
tracts of France into deserts, and driven into exile myriads of the most
peaceable, industrious, and skilful artisans in the world. But the English did
know that the two princes were bound together in the closest union. They saw
their sovereign with toleration on his lips, separating himself from those
states which had first set the example of toleration, and connecting himself by
the strongest ties with the most faithless and merciless persecutor who could
then be found on any continental throne.
By what advice again was James guided? Who were the persons in whom he placed
the greatest confidence, and who took the warmest interest in his schemes? The
ambassador of France, the Nuncio of Rome, and Father Petre the Jesuit. And is
not this enough to prove that the establishment of equal toleration was not his
plan? Was Lewis for toleration? Was the Vatican for toleration? Was the order of
Jesuits for toleration? We know that the liberal professions of James were
highly approved by those very governments, by those very societies, whose theory
and practice it notoriously was to keep no faith with heretics and to give no
quarter to heretics. And are we, in order to save James's reputation for
sincerity, to believe that all at once those governments and those societies had
changed their nature, had discovered the criminality of all their former
conduct, had adopted principles far more liberal than those of Locke, of
Leighton, or of Tillotson? Which is the more probable supposition, that the King
who had revoked the edict of Nantes, the Pope under whose sanction the
Inquisition was then imprisoning and burning, the religious order which, in
every controversy in which it had ever been engaged, had called in the aid
either of the magistrate or of the assassin, should have become as
thorough-going friends to religious liberty as Dr. Franklin and Mr. Jefferson,
or that a Jesuit-ridden bigot should be induced to dissemble for the good of the
Church?
The game which the Jesuits were playing was no new game. A hundred years before
they had preached up political freedom, just as they were now preaching up
religious freedom. They had tried to raise the republicans against Henry the
Fourth and Elizabeth, just as they were now trying to raise the Protestant
Dissenters against the Established Church. In the sixteenth century, the tools
of Philip the Second were constantly preaching doctrines that bordered on
Jacobinism, constantly insisting on the right of the people to cashier kings,
and of every private citizen to plunge his dagger into the heart of a wicked
ruler. In the seventeenth century, the persecutors of the Huguenots were crying
out against the tyranny of the Established Church of England, and vindicating
with the utmost fervor the right of every man to adore God after his own
fashion. In both cases they were alike insincere. In both cases the fool who had
trusted them would have found himself miserably duped. A good and wise man would
doubtless disapprove of the arbitrary measures of Elizabeth. But would he have
really served the interests of political liberty, if he had put faith in the
professions of the Romish Casuists, joined their party, and taken a share in
Northumberland's revolt, or in Babington's conspiracy? Would he not have been
assisting to establish a far worse tyranny than that which he was trying to put
down? In the same manner, a good and wise man would doubtless see very much to
condemn in the conduct of the Church of England under the Stuarts. But was he
therefore to join the King and the Catholics against that Church? And was it not
plain that, by so doing, he would assist in setting up a spiritual despotism,
compared with which the despotism of the Establishment was as a little finger to
the loins, as a rod of whips to a rod of scorpions?
Lewis had a far stronger mind than James. He had at least an equally high sense
of honor. He was in a much less degree the slave of his priests. His Protestant
subjects had all the security for their rights of conscience which law and
solemn compact could give. Had that security been found sufficient? And was not
one such instance enough for one generation?
The plan of James seems to us perfectly intelligible. The toleration which, with
the concurrence and applause of all the most cruel persecutors in Europe, he was
offering to his people, was meant simply to divide them. This is the most
obvious and vulgar of political artifices. We have seen it employed a hundred
times within our own memory. At this moment we see the Carlists in France
hallooing on the Extreme Left against the Centre Left. Four years ago the same
trick was practiced in England. We heard old buyers and sellers of boroughs, men
who had been seated in the House of Commons by the unsparing use of ejectments,
and who had, through their whole lives, opposed every measure which tended to
increase the power of the democracy, abusing the Reform Bill as not democratic
enough, appealing to the laboring classes, execrating the tyranny of the
ten-pound householders, and exchanging compliments and caresses with the most
noted incendiaries of our time. The cry of universal toleration was employed by
James, just as the cry of universal suffrage was lately employed by some veteran
Tories. The object of the mock democrats of our time was to produce a conflict
between the middle classes and the multitude, and thus to prevent all reform.
The object of James was to produce a conflict between the Church and the
Protestant Dissenters, and thus to facilitate the victory of the Catholics over
both.
We do not believe that he could have succeeded. But we do not think his plan so
utterly frantic and hopeless as it has generally been thought; and we are sure
that, if he had been allowed to gain his first point, the people would have had
no remedy left but an appeal to physical force, which would have been made under
most unfavorable circumstances. He conceived that the Tories, hampered by their
professions of passive obedience, would have submitted to his pleasure, and that
the Dissenters, seduced by his delusive promises of relief, would have given him
strenuous support. In this way he hoped to obtain a law, nominally for the
removal of all religious disabilities, but really for the excluding of all
Protestants from all offices. It is never to be forgotten that a prince who has
all the patronage of the State in his hands can, without violating the letter of
the law, establish whatever test he chooses. And, from the whole conduct of
James, we have not the smallest doubt that he would have availed himself of his
power to the utmost. The statute-book might declare all Englishmen equally
capable of holding office; but to what end, if all offices were in the gift of a
sovereign resolved not to employ a single heretic? We firmly believe that not
one post in the government, in the army, in the navy, on the bench, or at the
bar, not one peerage, nay not one ecclesiastical benefice in the royal gift,
would have been bestowed on any Protestant of any persuasion. Even while the
King had still strong motives to dissemble, he had made a Catholic Dean of
Christ Church and a Catholic President of Magdalen College. There seems to be no
doubt that the See of York was kept vacant for another Catholic. If James had
been suffered to follow this course for twenty years, every military man from a
general to a drummer, every officer of a ship, every judge, every King's
counsel, every lord-lieutenant of a county, every justice of the peace, every
ambassador, every minister of state, every person employed in the royal
household, in the custom-house, in the post-office, in the excise, would have
been a Catholic. The Catholics would have had a majority in the House of Lords,
even if that majority had been made, as Sunderland threatened, by bestowing
coronets on a whole troop of the Guards. Catholics would have had, we believe,
the chief weight even in the Convocation. Every bishop, every dean, every holder
of a crown living, every head of every college which was subject to the royal
power, would have belonged to the Church of Rome. Almost all the places of
liberal education would have been under the direction of Catholics. The whole
power of licensing books would have been in the hands of Catholics. All this
immense mass of power would have been steadily supported by the arms and by the
gold of France, and would have descended to an heir whose whole education would
have been conducted with a view to one single end, the complete re-establishment
of the Catholic religion. The House of Commons would have been the only legal
obstacle. But the rights of a great portion of the electors were at the mercy of
the courts of law; and the courts of law were absolutely dependent on the Crown.
We cannot therefore think it altogether impossible that a House might have been
packed which would have restored the days of Mary.
We certainly do not believe that this would have been tamely borne. But we do
believe that, if the nation had been deluded by the King's professions of
toleration, all this would have been attempted, and could have been averted only
by a most bloody and destructive contest, in which the whole Protestant
population would have been opposed to the Catholics. On the one side would have
been a vast numerical superiority. But on the other side would have been the
whole organization of government, and two great disciplined armies, that of
James, and that of Lewis. We do not doubt that the nation would have achieved
its deliverance. But we believe that the struggle would have shaken the whole
fabric of society, and that the vengeance of the conquerors would have been
terrible and unsparing.
But James was stopped at the outset. He thought himself secure of the Tories,
because they professed to consider all resistance as sinful, and of the
Protestant Dissenters, because he offered them relief. He was in the wrong as to
both. The error into which he fell about the Dissenters was very natural. But
the confidence which he placed in the loyal assurances of the High Church party,
was the most exquisitely ludicrous proof of folly that a politician ever gave.
Only imagine a man acting for one single day on the supposition that all his
neighbors believe all that they profess, and act up to all that they believe.
Imagine a man acting on the supposition that he may safely offer the deadliest
injuries and insults to everybody who says that revenge is sinful; or that he
may safely entrust all his property without security to any person who says that
it is wrong to steal. Such a character would be too absurd for the wildest
farce. Yet the folly of James did not stop short of this incredible extent.
Because the clergy had declared that resistance to oppression was in no case
lawful, he conceived that he might oppress them exactly as much as he chose,
without the smallest danger of resistance. He quite forgot that, when they
magnified the royal prerogative, the prerogative was exerted on their side,
that, when they preached endurance, they had nothing to endure, that, when they
declared it unlawful to resist evil, none but Whigs and Dissenters suffered any
evil. It had never occurred to him that a man feels the calamities of his
enemies with one sort of sensibility, and his own with quite a different sort.
It had never occurred to him as possible that a reverend divine might think it
the duty of Baxter and Bunyan to bear insults and to lie in dungeons without
murmuring, and yet when he saw the smallest chance that his own prebend might be
transferred to some sly Father from Italy or Flanders, might begin to discover
much matter for useful meditation in the texts touching Ehud's knife and Jael's
hammer. His majesty was not aware, it should seem, that people do sometimes
reconsider their opinions; and that nothing more disposes a man to reconsider
his opinions, than a suspicion, that, if he adheres to them, he is very likely
to be a beggar or a martyr. Yet it seems strange that these truths should have
escaped the royal mind. Those Churchmen who had signed the Oxford Declaration in
favor of passive obedience had also signed the thirty-nine Articles. And yet the
very man who confidently expected that, by a little coaxing and bullying, he
should induce them to renounce the Articles, was thunderstruck when he found
that they were disposed to soften down the doctrines of the Declaration. Nor did
it necessarily follow that, even if the theory of the Tories had undergone no
modification, their practice would coincide with their theory. It might, one
should think, have crossed the mind of a man of fifty, who had seen a great deal
of the world, that people sometimes do what they think wrong. Though a prelate
might hold that Paul directs us to obey even a Nero, it might not on that
account be perfectly safe to treat the Right Reverend Father in God after the
fashion of Nero, in the hope that he would continue to obey on the principles of
Paul. The King indeed had only to look at home. He was at least as much attached
to the Catholic Church as any Tory gentleman or clergyman could be to the Church
of England. Adultery was at least as clearly and strongly condemned by his
Church as resistance by the Church of England. Yet his priests could not keep
him from Arabella Sedley. While he was risking his crown for the sake of his
soul, he was risking his soul for the sake of an ugly, dirty mistress. There is
something delightfully grotesque in the spectacle of a man who, while living in
the habitual violation of his own known duties, is unable to believe that any
temptation can draw any other person aside from the path of virtue.
James was disappointed in all his calculations. His hope was that the Tories
would follow their principles, and that the Nonconformists would follow their
interests. Exactly the reverse took place. The great body of the Tories
sacrificed the principle of non-resistance to their interests; the great body of
Nonconformists rejected the delusive offers of the King, and stood firmly by
their principles. The two parties whose strife had convulsed the empire during
half a century were united for a moment; and all that vast royal power which
three years before had seemed immovably fixed vanished at once like chaff in a
hurricane.
The very great length to which this article has already been extended makes it
impossible for us to discuss, as we had meant to do, the characters and conduct
of the leading English statesmen at this crisis. But we must offer a few remarks
on the spirit and tendency of the Revolution of 1688.
The editor of this volume quotes the Declaration of Right, and tells us that, by
looking at it, we may "judge at a glance whether the authors of the Revolution
achieved all they might and ought, in their position, to have achieved; whether
the Commons of England did their duty to their constituents, their country,
posterity, and universal freedom." We are at a loss to imagine how he can have
read and transcribed the Declaration of Right, and yet have so utterly
misconceived its nature. That famous document is, as its very name imports,
declaratory, and not remedial. It was never meant to be a measure of reform. It
neither contained, nor was designed to contain, any allusion to those
innovations which the authors of the Revolution considered as desirable, and
which they speedily proceeded to make. The Declaration was merely a recital of
certain old and wholesome laws which had been violated by the Stuarts, and a
solemn protest against the validity of any precedent which might be set up in
opposition to those laws. The words run thus: "They do claim, demand, and insist
upon all and singular the premises as their undoubted rights and liberties."
Before a man begins to make improvements on his estate, he must know its
boundaries. Before a legislature sits down to reform a constitution, it is fit
to ascertain what that constitution really is. This is all that the Declaration
was intended to do; and to quarrel with it because it did not directly introduce
any beneficial changes is to quarrel with meat for not being fuel.
The principle on which the authors of the Revolution acted cannot be mistaken.
They were perfectly aware that the English institutions stood in need of reform.
But they also knew that an important point was gained if they could settle once
for all, by a solemn compact, the matters which had, during several generations,
been in controversy between Parliament and the Crown. They therefore most
judiciously abstained from mixing up the irritating and perplexing question of
what ought to be the law with the plain question of what was the law. As to the
claims set forth in the Declaration of Right, there was little room for debate,
Whigs and Tories were generally agreed as to the illegality of the dispensing
power and of taxation imposed by the royal prerogative. The articles were
therefore adjusted in a very few days. But if the Parliament had determined to
revise the whole constitution, and to provide new securities against
misgovernment, before proclaiming the new sovereign, months would have been lost
in disputes. The coalition which had delivered the country would have been
instantly dissolved. The Whigs would have quarreled with the Tories, the Lords
with the Commons, the Church with the Dissenters; and all this storm of
conflicting interests and conflicting theories would have been raging round a
vacant throne. In the meantime, the greatest power on the Continent was
attacking our allies, and meditating a descent on our own territories. Dundee
was preparing to raise the Highlands. The authority of James was still owned by
the Irish. If the authors of the Revolution had been fools enough to take this
course, we have little doubt that Luxembourg would have been upon them in the
midst of their constitution-making. They might probably have been interrupted in
a debate on Filmer's and Sydney's theories of government by the entrance of the
musketeers of Lewis's household, and have been marched off, two and two, to
frame imaginary monarchies and commonwealths in the Tower. We have had in our
own time abundant experience of the effects of such folly. We have seen nation
after nation enslaved, because the friends of liberty wasted in discussions upon
abstract questions the time which ought to have been employed in preparing for
vigorous national defense. This editor, apparently, would have had the English
Revolution of 1688 end as the Revolutions of Spain and Naples ended in our days.
Thank God, our deliverers were men of a very different order from the Spanish
and Neapolitan legislators. They might on many subjects hold opinions which, in
the nineteenth century, would not be considered as liberal. But they were not
dreaming pedants. They were statesmen accustomed to the management of great
affairs. Their plans of reform were not so extensive as those of the lawgivers
of Cadiz; but what they planned, that they effected; and what they effected,
that they maintained against the fiercest hostility at home and abroad.
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